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Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Ghostbusters, Egon Spengler - Review

Ghostbusters fans rejoice! We finally have the complete team in uniform! Actually, Peter is still slimed... and if you already had the SDCC Egon, then you finished your team with the June release of Venkman. So if you're like me, you're still waiting for Peter's November release, too.

Forget rejoicing... continue lamenting. But put that on pause for a few minutes while we look at the September GB release of Egon Spengler (sans slime)!

Yes, sir! Today we're reviewing the latest entry in Mattel's Ghostbusters Movie Masters Classics (that sounds about right), Dr. Egon Spengler! This is the brainy scientist's second release in the line and this time he features a clean uniform and new accessories!

Egon shares his sculpt with the rest of the jumpsuited team, more precisely with Ray and Winston as Venkman is the only one wearing gloves and untucked pant legs. Of course, Egon features a mock Harold Ramis (ca. 1984) head sculpt. I'll focus on that instead of the reuse of the body.

I don't own the SDCC version of Egon, but I assume it features the same bulbous mug on the shoulders. He has the largest head of any of the GB and not just because of hi hair. The thing is huge! The eye glasses are a separate piece glued on to his face. They're a bit cartoony with their exaggeratedly thick frame, but it doesn't bother me much. I've seen fan pics where they've replaced the glasses with thinner, square-framed lenses. That looks good, too, but I feel these figures have more of a caricature look to them, so I don't mind it.

Everything is painted the way you'd expect for the Ghostbusters line, although it seems my figure had some of the paint on his undershirt scratched off. The stand out area is the proton pack. Excellent sculpt aside, the paint brings out the the details and adds a few to the classic GB weapon. The wiring on the back is painted with each wire in the ribbon a different color. Various buttons and switches receive attention recreating the look of the pack's lights and meters in action.

Standard articulation model for the line here. I'll note that the head and neck are one piece, but the base of the neck plugs into all ball-joint that stucks up our of the torso. It has fairly good range, even up and down. The weird elbow joint tends to get a lot of criticism, and rightfully so as it looks like his arms are dislocated if straightened out.

Egon's unique accessories are his trademark PKE meter and a stack of books. The PKE meter features a nice sculpt with buttons and a little screen added for great detail. The swing-out arms are NOT articulated. They are molded in the "out" position. This essentially limits the PKE meter to being an "in-hand" type of accessory. There is no spot on Egon's belt to hook or store the meter, but it would look ridiculous anyway considering how it was sculpted.

Mattel added a stack of books with Egon in an attempt to recreate the library scene in the first film. It looks completely inaccurate. The accessory looks like a stack of dictionaries, phone books and oversized art books. To resemble the on-screen stack of books, it should feature smaller books and be at least as tall as the figure. I wish they packed in a new ghost instead. But which one? Hmm... what on-screen ghost could they have used to recreate the LIBRARY scene?

I give up.

All in all the figure is what I expected and I can at least display the whole team on my shelf now. Is there anything wrong with the team? Yes. I would prefer they all came with gloved hands like Peter, or even better, alternate gloved hands you could switch out. Proton streams should be standard for the uniformed team. A display stand (a throwaway item in the WWE lines) would be a great standard item to include with each figure. I've debated whether or not to buy four unslimed Venkman's to switch out the arms on the other guys and be able to display all four guys firing proton streams, but I have not decided either way.

I will point out that once "clean" Peter is released, I'm pretty much done with this line. I may only go back if they ever release the big bads (i.e. Gozer, Vigo, etc.), other than that, I have what I wanted. It's sad that it took almost a year for me to complete the team, and really, it's not complete because I still need Venkman to make it all "look right". The upcoming figures are a let-down and I can't invest any more cash in the line considering what's being offered.